Effects
of Orthographic Similarity in Processing Japanese Kanji
A. Morita & K. Tamaoka |
The
present study examined whether the processing of orthographic information
from two-kanji compound words is affected by contextual information.
Twenty-four undergraduate and graduate Japanese students participated
in each experiment. Experiment 1 used two-kanji compound words in
a lexical decision task to study orthographic processing at the lexical
level. Experiment 2 required participants to detect misspellings
(i.e., incorrect kanji combinations) of two-kanji compound stimuli
embedded in sentences. Experiment 3 used a semantic decision task.
In this task, in addition to the sentences used in Experiment 2,
contextually incorrect but existing kanji compound words were used
as fillers in sentences. In all three tasks, orthographically similar
nonwords (–µ–ñ in place of the real word —\–ñ), caused longer reaction
times and more errors than orthographically dissimilar nonwords (“f–ñ).
However, post-hoc analysis of error rates among the three experiments
showed that orthographic processing of orthographically similar nonwords
presented individually seems to differ from when the same nonwords
are embedded in sentences. This result suggests that contextual information
does have an influence on orthographic processing. Key words: Japanese kanji, orthography, contextual information, orthographic similarity |